Waterloo, US
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It has been fascinating to watch this thread. I'll go back to my early days in photography. I have beenn there a couple of times this year, reviewing the past. Kodachrome slide film had an ASA (a measure of film sensitivity standing for the American Standards Association, when ISO was more of a Eurpoean measurement) of 10! Ektachrome had an ASA of 32. Remember, transparency film was developed in two basic steps. First a negative image was developed -- what we shot. It was then discarded chemically and what remained was reexposed, eiher physically by exposing the partially processed film to a bright light or chemically. That remaining image was then developed. The positive, or slide, was what remained after the negative image was developed and discarded. I know -- Kodachrome was a much more complex process consisting of 14 steps, including dies that were chemically placed in separate layers. We didn't do this in the sink at home! Any overexposure at all, especially with Kodachrome, reulted in washed out highlights. Kodachrome had a latitude of about 1/2 stop! Many photographers underexposed, at least a little, when using color transparency film, to prevent blown out highlights and to make colors deeper and richer. There's no need to do that today. PP -- be it Photoshop or more easily, Nikon Capture NX2, can modify exposure -- or the resulting brightness or darkness, even contrast and saturation -- in various areas of the image, especially if it is shot in RAW. In many ways, jpegs are like transparencies, excee they can be modified for brightness, contrast, etc., in PP, only not as much as RAW exposures. The best advice is to expose to get a proper histogram. That's the digital analog of the old properly exposed negative, with a full range of tones. So I see little reason to purposely underexpose. What we are doing in many cases is simply exposing for the part of the scene we want to be CORRECTLY exposed. Meters essentially try to render whatever they aer reading -- the full frame, a center-weighted area or a very small area, as 18% grey in intensity. If that's NOT what the most important part of your scene is, then you need to tell the meter, "No, that's supposed to be a darker or lighter part of the image -- and I want it recorded and rendered in THAT manner. You "over expose" to make it lighter or "under expose" to make it darker. This is why I am disinclined to follow blanket instructions -- to underxpose to make colors richer. There are too many moving parts in the world AND our cameras to accept that as a "stake in the ground." Your Nikon Matrix meters have sample scenes in their memory to try to interpret this for you. That's my old guy's 2 cents worth. Alan
Waterloo, IL, USA
www.proimagingmidamerica.com
Visit my Nikonians gallery.
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